Am I still killing comics?

* I have yet to finish Alice in Sunderland. I got it, what, nearly two months ago? Yeah, still haven't finished it. I've tried, but, you know what? It's not doing a whole lot for me. Sure, Talbot does some interesting stuff with genre, form, narrative voice, etc., but, really, that only takes you so far before pages upon pages of historical facts bog things down.

Now, I plan to finish it at some point, but I can't right now. I know it's supposed to be brilliant and all, but I'm not going to fake loving something I'm not just to fit in with the comic book elite (and I do say that in the most joking way possible, just so you know).

* Can't seem to attempt the rereading of Superman: For Tomorrow. It's been sitting atop my pile of stuff for a few days now and every time I open it, I see that Jim Lee art and every aethetic bone in my body screams. I really don't get the attraction to his work beyond thinking back to those days of the early '90s when that style was all the vogue and "Writing? What writing?" was yelled by fanboys from coast-to-coast.

* I did reread Warren Ellis' JLA Classified story and have decided that one of the reasons why DC is failing so much is that this is not the voice they are using. My god, do you know how refreshing it is to read a comic where these people actually talk like fucking adults? The scenes involving Lois and Clark are pure gold--imagine that, journalists being snarky, sarcastic and competitive, but not in a cutesy Grant/Hepburn way? There are a couple of spots where the Ellisisms become a bit too much, but, for the most part, you can see why Marvel has tapped the guy to write superhero books for them.

I . . . I think I'm killing comics . . . (not really, of course)

So, I'm reading this interview with Dan Slott about She-Hulk and I noticed a couple of things.

Oh, and please note that I'm not trying to single out Slott. I don't think I've read anything of his and, honestly, have no opinion on him. I'm just mentioning him and this interview as an example because, well, I thought of this stuff while reading it.

1. The interview is all about him leaving She-Hulk for some HUGE, can't-say-no-to project . . . but he can't tell us what it is.

2. Nor are we told who the new creative team will be.

So . . . what was the point of the interview? You could argue it's just a friendly little update, but so what? WHY?

I've noticed a lot of these interviews popping up on Newsarama and every single time they do, I end up screaming "What was the fucking point?"

And I've decided what it is: because people like me will read them.

Newsarama needs content and what creator doesn't love free publicity? And, well, I need something to read between refreshing my inbox and waiting for someone interesting to come on MSN.

I mean, I've never read She-Hulk or anything Dan Slott's written, but I read that fucking interview. AND I read the one from yesterday discussing this week's issue of She-Hulk. What the fuck, man?

Newsarama (and sites like it) suffer from the same problem as cable news channels where they're on 24 hours a day, seven days a week really. Now, Newsarama tends to only update during the usual work hours with minimal updates on weekends (not including convention weekends), but there's still the pressure to constantly give idiots like me new content. They know that and so do the publishers.

Let's be honest, 90% of the content on those sites is bullshit--meaningless, non-information that doesn't really deserve it's own story (hell, in the case I'm talking about, why weren't the two Dan Slott interviews just one longer article?). Most of the time, they're glorified press releases dressed up as interviews meant to give me something to read and feed the hype machine. They're an endless stream of "read the next interview and maybe we'll tell you something . . ."

And if I stopped reading, they'd also stop (and I'm, of course, using "I" to mean all of us), but I most likely won't. That's fucked up.